International Law

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Posted on December 30, 2008
I recently commented far too favourably on the the new Law Society Gazette site. There is no way to browse the archives which is frustrating. But to give the site some juice, the opinion sections in particular should be inviting our comments. I’d have liked, for example, to respond to Clive Wismayer, Solicitor, Great Bookham, who [...

Twitter redux

Posted on December 17, 2008
In Twitter, the good the bad and the ugly James Mullan poses some of the questions many have in understanding - and extracting - the value of Twitter. Perhaps I should … lower my expectations of what value I?m actually going to derive from Twitter...

What about clients?

Posted on December 12, 2008
In a series of recent posts, Jordan Furlong gives his slant on the arguments at the heart of Richard Susskind’s thesis: Decoupling price from cost in legal services: In order to turn a profit, firms will be forced to streamline their costs of production, whatever they might be...

Barristers? CPD - don?t panic

Posted on December 12, 2008
In his inimitable style Geeklawyer trashes the need for CPD for barristers: “let?s bin the **** rubbish”. That pending, he recommends using a cheap online CPD provider. I couldn’t agree more. By far the best value in town are the two current Legal Web ebooks with CPD which Delia Venables and I have compiled: each is [...

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The future of lawyers

Posted on December 10, 2008
I have not yet found on the public access web anything approaching a review of Richard Susskind’s The End of Lawyers? (Oxford University Press). So I must conclude I’m one of the few who have actually read it from cover to cover. To say I’ve read it is a bit of an exaggeration; I confess [...

AustLII case law developments

Posted on December 03, 2008
The good people at AustLII have been working on a citator for common law cases and the fruits of their labours can now be checked out at LawCite (Alpha). LawCite is an international case citator and is the first product of a 3 year Australian Research Council funded project to research into automated systems for citation [...

Way to go Law Society Gazette

Posted on November 07, 2008
Must have been asleep or too busy these last few months to notice that the Law Society Gazette has morphed into a wonderful site: Online the Gazette is as radically changed [as the print edition], with all sections of the magazine represented. Most importantly, each area of Gazette coverage is now easily accessible - we have [...

Blogging is normal - let?s move on

Posted on November 07, 2008
An article in this week?s Economist concludes: Gone, in other words, is any sense that blogging as a technology is revolutionary, subversive or otherwise exalted, and this upsets some of its pioneers. Confirmed, however, is the idea that blogging is useful and versatile...

Hard times?

Posted on November 07, 2008
A personal opinion from a “usually tetchy but recently quite chipper old buzzard” on how the recession is affecting the legal world: Personal Injury - times have never been better Housing Law - good times! Divorce - quiet time of year, but come January, credit crunch or no, its open season Wills and Probate - dead as a dodo Employment [...

Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0 November/December issue

Posted on November 05, 2008
In this issue: Does price comparison work for legal services? by Anthony Armitage Alternative legal services ? solicitors fight back by Delia Venables Law Society Library Online by Chris Holland Developing a niche practice online by Tessa Shepperson Virtual in-house legal services by Katherine Evans Managing Web 2...

exCiting Times

Posted on October 29, 2008
I’ve mentioned Feedity before - a natty feed generator which will scrape a web page and deliver a feed based on the linked list(s) it finds there. It usually returns some unwanted links too, but you can then tweek the feed to deliver just the main items...

In praise of editors

Posted on October 29, 2008
In the The end of the story - as we know it in Guardian Media Jeff Jarvis republishes the argument in his earlier blog post that The building block of journalism is no longer the article. Single posts, videos, Wikipedia entries or search results may be new building blocks of media, but we need order atop [...

Are you being served?

Posted on October 27, 2008
I’ve been asked - and I ask you as I have some difficulty with the question: What are law firms’ needs when it comes to legal publishing? And to what extent are those needs being met by the legal publishing companies? My difficulties with the question are twofold...

Bilge pump

Posted on October 24, 2008
I’m not going to take the linkbait laid by Paul Boutin in Wired Magazine telling us to quit blogging because the blogosphere has been “flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge” and that time is “better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter”...

Not a plug for Lexis Web

Posted on October 17, 2008
Tried out the (US) Lexis Web beta search engine yet? It indexes “important, legal-oriented Web content selected and validated by the LexisNexis editorial staff”, including Governmental agency information (federal, state, local) Informal commentary on legal issues (e...

Free Legal Web Barcamp

Posted on October 01, 2008
The Free Legal Web Barcamp is taking place on Saturday 18 October at the RSA in London. We already have a good number of people participating, but more is better. If you’d like to have your say as to how the Free Legal Web might be developed, please do sign up...

Catching up

Posted on September 18, 2008
Been away on protracted hols. Quite possible to have kept posting of course, but did not have the inclination. Had I done so, here’s a few things I might have posted about: Martindale-Hubbell Connected In July Robert Ambroggi took an exclusive first look...

Will lawyers always be tech laggards?

Posted on September 18, 2008
Simon Fodden on Slaw writes that the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey reports that most attorneys stay current via websites and email newsletters; only a small minority reads blogs, and blogging is seen as geeky; RSS feeds are not used by most, social networks are only just now catching on and podcasts and online videos [...

Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0 September/October issue

Posted on September 08, 2008
In this issue: Alternative legal services: part 2 Enjoyable and useful ? CPD from Nick and Delia Pay per click advertising Mining the value of law firm publications Navigating the Web 2.0 safe harbour Justis extend Irish reports Lextranet ? an intranet for a law firm Getting it wrong with Web 2...

Two new ebooks with CPD

Posted on September 06, 2008
A belated plug for the two new Legal Web ebooks edited and published jointly by me and Delia Venables. The 2008/2009 ebooks are: Topics of Modern Legal Practice Software as a Service for legal applications New and developing legal resources on the web Alternative legal services - how will legal services be delivered in future? Domain names in a legal [...

Behind the times

Posted on August 21, 2008
Alex Wade in Times Online looks at blawging: “only a handful of legal practitioners maintain blogs”. No way! Sure only a handful of law firms maintain firm-branded blogs, but as we on Binary Law all know, maybe half the hundreds of UK blawgs out there are by practitioners; and let’s not forget to mention the academics, [...

Don?t don the black cap

Posted on August 20, 2008
A recent post on LexBlog highlights the importance of knowing what you’re doing or what others are doing for you when you seek to boost your Google juice by purchasing links or engaging in “excessive” link exchanges. In his post FindLaw gaming Google? Kevin O’Keefe reviews what FindLaw are doing for lawyer customers for $1,000 [...

The Free Legal Web

Posted on August 19, 2008
Spotted the new addition to the header menu? Read the Manifesto.

Hello Canada!

Posted on August 11, 2008
I’ve recommended the Canadian-based co-operative blog Slaw before as one of the best blawgs around. Pop it in your reader now. There’s been a recent decision to expand its coverage beyond the original “legal research” - we’ll have to see how that pans out - and to expand its membership...

Blogs as a publishing platform

Posted on July 23, 2008
Dave Winer, pioneer of blogging, RSS and other publishing standards, recently posted about the importance of blogs as a publishing platform: Publishing keeps getting cheaper. That’s been the constant push, the practical application of Moore’s Law in my neck of the woods...

Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0 July/August 2008 issue

Posted on July 14, 2008
In this issue: Alternative legal services Why email newsletters? Getting the best from RSS Clicks are not enough New Legal Web ebooks with CPD A new search engine for employment law ? ELISE Software as a Service for barristers The law publishers and Web 2...

Unlocking the power of information

Posted on July 10, 2008
As regular readers will know, one of my pet subjects is unlocking the power of public sector information, and I’ve actively campaigned for it as it relates to legal information. The ball is now really rolling on this with the introduction of two new services from government: From OPSI - Public Sector Information Unlocking Service (beta) As the [...

Vote Binary Law for a better future

Posted on July 08, 2008
Fame of a sort beckons. Would all my readers form an orderly queue and cast their votes here: in Law Blogs

Going to Barbados

Posted on June 29, 2008
See you soon.

Monitoring LexMonitor

Posted on June 25, 2008
There has been a fair amount of comment on LexMonitor, Lexblog’s law blog aggregation service in the last few days since its soft launch. Aside from straightforward reports of its launch and what it is, there have been some who have been quick to trash it - either the whole concept or because of current failings...

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